Thursday, September 6, 2018

We Went to Canada and Saw Halifax!

Here's what we've done on our trip so far:

Here's our first stop at Steamtown National Historic Site.

After leaving Fundy National Park, we drove to Halifax, Nova Scotia!

I'd been looking forward to our accommodations in Halifax, because I'd booked us a three-bed room in a dormitory in St. Mary's University. It would be the kids' first time staying in a university dorm, and eating breakfast in a university dorm cafeteria--how fun!

What I didn't realize, however, until I unlocked the door to our room, is that I hadn't actually booked us a three-bed room. I'd booked us a THREE-BEDROOM APARTMENT! We had a wee, but full kitchen. We had a full bathroom. We each had our own bedroom! Mine looked out onto the football field, where team practices had apparently already commenced:


We were all absolutely thrilled. By this time, we'd been living in each other's pockets for nearly a week, and the thought of spending the evening each of us all alone in her own room?

Oh, my gosh. Just... bliss.

But first, we needed groceries, and we finally had a decent-sized city to buy them in! Just so you're aware, grocery shopping in a foreign city is one of my favorite tourist activities, and the kids have caught onto that just fine. We all three of us adore wandering around an unfamiliar grocery store, picking out unfamiliar foods with fun packaging, and nomming it down. Will, in particular, was on a mission to spy the VERY Canadian Milk in a Bag.

We did spy that milk, although we did not buy it--this time. We did buy juice, and fruit, and sandwich stuff, and Whippets, and a different brand of All-Dressed potato chips that was NOT as good as Ridgies, and frozen pizza, and I absolutely thrilled a liquor store clerk when I asked him if Nova Scotia has any local hard ciders.

DOES it?!?

Friends, it DOES.

And after only one incident in which I thought we had a flat tire but it turned out that Will had actually just managed to close her door onto an entire tree branch (?!?), and another incident in which Syd thought she'd locked herself out of her room but I'd showed her that she hadn't, so she then proceeded to immediately ACTUALLY lock herself out of her room as some sort of misguided science experiment (!!!), I am not ashamed to tell you that we each settled down into her respective private bedroom with frozen pizza and her own respective screen (props to the quality of university wi-fi!), and proceeded to completely ignore each other for the rest of the night.

It was exactly what we needed.

I  am a firm believer in early rising on vacations if you want to see stuff before it's crowded, and the kids are now believers, too, because WE got to the Paleo station in the dorm cafeteria when it was empty, but by the time we were ready for seconds the line for that station stretched out the door. There were probably people STILL in line for their eggs and sausage by the time I'd found my way to downtown Halifax, the kids had helped me score a free parking spot (that's what you get for reading all the signs really carefully!), and we'd walked the waterfront to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic:

This is Merlin. He has his own webcam!


There was stuff about pirates, which was awesome--


--and a movie about right whales, which advertised itself as "family friendly" and "a message of hope" but was actually deeply upsetting and we all came out of it staring at each other with big eyes, like, "Umm, were you also traumatized by the devastating human impact on the right whale community?"

The movie was the story of Calvin, though, and you really should know it. Just be prepared to be upset for about a month afterwards.

This is the set of Theodore Tugboat:




You guys, I am 100% sure that I watched this show as a kid!






The kids and I had JUST been talking about birchbark canoes--you know, as you do--so it was perfect timing to see this one on exhibit:



I knew nothing about the Halifax Explosion before we came to this museum, other than that it was a thing. But man, the Halifax Explosion! How horrible and terrifying and heartbreaking!



But here, although I don't have many photos of it, is the reason why I wanted to visit the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic:


That's a remnant of the Titanic. After the Titanic sank, survivors were sent to New York City, but bodies came to Halifax. The rescue crews also brought along other pieces of the ship and its belongings, and what wasn't returned to living relatives, buried in the local cemetery, or taken by private individuals, has remained, and some of it is displayed in the museum.

The gallery takes an extensive look at the lives of all three classes of passenger, as well as the crew, and details the recovery efforts and how artifacts were preserved and, as with this deck chair fashioned using that above wicker remnant as a model, occasionally recreated:



The lighting in the museum was not great, so here are just a few photos of artifacts:




Rest assured, however, that I obsessively pored over the exhibit and in my head I have models of the lifeboats and the sunken bow of the ship, diagrams of where each class of passenger slept and took their exercise, maps of where the ship sank and where the other nearest ships were at the time, telegrams and newspaper articles, wreckwood, a medicine cabinet, and a heartbreakingly small pair of shoes.

There were other exhibits of other artifacts recovered from other sunken ships--



--and a billion more things to look at, but Syd got bored and restless and needed tending to, so I bought her a sweatshirt and took her back to talk to Merlin:


At one point I went to look for Will, and found her on the second floor, reading all about archaeological excavation of a shipwreck. I told her to take her time, but that her sister was finished looking around, and she responded, kind of frantically, "I don't know why I have to read every sign, but I do!"

That's cool, Kid. Read every sign, and afterward I'll buy you a sweatshirt, too, and take you both back to the waterfront:


There was playground play by my two toddlers-at-heart--


And then we sampled that Canadian dish known as poutine:


It didn't sound appetizing to me--French fries covered in brown gravy and cheese curds--



--but we gave it a shot: 


We all agreed that we probably don't need to taste poutine again...

We actually left Halifax after this for Kejimkujik National Park, but we were back the next evening, and with a couple of hours to kill, I took the kids back to the waterfront (I mean, that free parking lot!!!), bought them some ice cream, and we sat quietly by Halifax Harbor while they ate. And then one kid cried out, and then the other one joined her, and then I saw them, too:


Seals, playing in the harbor:


Other tourists came and went, noticed them or didn't, but we sat and watched them quietly for more than an hour, until they finally swam away and I took my two to our hotel, where we could swim, too.

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

We Went to Canada and Saw the World's Highest Tides in Fundy National Park!

Here's what we've done on our trip so far:

Here's our first stop at Steamtown National Historic Site.

After we drove back to our motel from Hopwell Rocks (finding the cars in the parking lot parked all in a completely different configuration and still no potable water), we dried off, ate more sandwiches and microwaved novelty foods, and then figured that if the rain hadn't necessarily stopped, per se, it had nearly enough done so, and if we made our move, we could mosey over to Alma Beach and watch the World's Highest Tide come rolling in.

So that's what we did!


The edge of those large cobbles is about the high tide line, and from that edge to as far as the camera can see is currently the tidal flats of low tide:


Here's the thing about the Bay of Fundy and the tides: the Bay of Fundy is partially enclosed, and its seiche happens to match the tides. The tide teams up with the seiche and amplifies the wave, so that high tides are higher, and low tides are lower than anywhere else in the world. At low tide here on Alma Beach, it's over a kilometer between the high tide line and the water. We had to hike waaaaay out to find the water's edge:






Found it!







In the video below, check out how even the ocean sounds different without any retreating waves, and check out how it makes almost an optical illusion out of simply looking out into the distance: even in the video you get the impression that you're gliding forward, although I stood in one spot the whole time, and that illusion was much more prominent in person--I felt a hint of vertigo if I focused on it too long!







Will was VERY focused on making sand castles (I'll show you why in a moment--it's pretty awesome!), and every now and then Syd would throw one up, too, but mostly she zoomed in and out, running waaaay out into the water, then back again, then out again, in absolute ecstasy:










Will has always been very much one to grub in the dirt, and she happily made herself a beautiful castle:

But then this happened:



The kids were both delighted, and built castles over and over and over again, watching them flood and then moving up the beach to build them anew:




Better go rinse off in the water!



Eventually, the tide chased us nearly back up to those rocks that I showed you in the first photographs:



Time to hike back to the motel, then, making sure that we don't have any shells in our pockets!

The next morning, fortunately, it was clearing up and looking to be a fine day--the finest of days to finally see the rest of Fundy National Park!






And will you look what we have here!


I'd been sharing online my map of national park sites with Junior Ranger programs, and a reader mentioned the Canadian national parks' Xplorers program. I'd seen the program listed for the parks we'd planned to explore, but the age range was too young for my kids so I'd written it off. This reader, though, assured me that the age range didn't matter, and the rangers would be happy to let the kids participate. Indeed it didn't matter, and indeed they were happy, and so were the kids!

I love these types of programs so much both because they keep the kids engaged in what we're seeing and doing, and because they encourage the whole family to see and do things that we otherwise wouldn't. Like THIS beautiful beach!





The kids make collections to look at, but we never keep them--we're in a national park!


After hiking back up to the car from the beach, we made sandwiches and retreated to a nearby picnic table to eat and rest. At another picnic table across the way was a family with two young children, and even though the day was hot and it looked like they'd just come from the beach, too, they were hosting some kind of Child Olympics for their children, consisting of getting them to run various races all around the picnic area. My two looked on in horror, and in between bites of sandwich, Will asked, "Why are they DOING that?!?"

"Probably because they're about to get in the car for a long drive and they want to wear them out," I replied. Parenting. It's universal!

Soon after, we stopped by the visitor's center so that the kids could receive their hard-earned rewards--

Xplorers get dog tags. I LOVE that idea!
--and then we got back into the car for our own long drive to Halifax, although wearing out the kids first was not required (frankly, I think all the hiking had done that job for me...).